Silent St. Joseph, strong like the Father

Saint Joseph (from a Nativity), 18th century, Ecuadorian and Philippine. Metropolitan Museum of Art/Open Access.

As we honor St. Joseph through the Novena and on March 19, let us learn from his humility, modesty, and silence. Let us imitate him, doing good in the background. Let our secrets be holy ones. Let the layers of our lives become permeated by mercy and love at each and every level. Let us get closer to God, and so become strong in our weakness.

Enroll your loved ones in the Novena to St. Joseph, March 10-18. Details here.

By Chris Sparks

February 2, [1936]. In the morning, when the bell awoke me, I was so overcome by drowsiness which I could not shake off that I jumped into cold water, and after two minutes the sleepiness left me. When I came to meditation a host of absurd thoughts swarmed into my head, so much so that I had to struggle throughout the whole meditation. It was the same during prayer time, but when Mass began, a strange silence and joy filled my heart. Just then, I saw Our Lady with the Infant Jesus, and the Holy Old Man [St. Joseph] standing behind them.

The most holy Mother said to me, Take My Dearest Treasure, and She handed me the Infant Jesus. When I took the Infant Jesus in my arms, the Mother of God and Saint Joseph disappeared. I was left alone with the Infant Jesus (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, 608).

One of my very favorite fantasy trilogies is the Riddlemaster series by Patricia McKillip, and not just because she’s from the Pacific Northwest. She also has some of the very greatest images and symbols of the truths of the Gospel I’ve ever encountered.

I shouldn’t give spoilers — it’s a beautifully twisty book, as the title suggests. Suffice it to say that the greatest, most powerful character in the book is revealed, not by big noises, flashy magic, and huge explosions, but by silence.

The power of peaceful strength
Silence is the sign of ultimate strength. The whisper or even quieter of well-working machinery; the silence of the strong man lifting what to the rest of us would be a heavy weight, and to him, is nothing. 

When a person is well-matched to their task, or to their vocation, and utters not a word of complaint, not through stoic endurance of the intolerable, but because they are true masters of the work at hand; when there’s no chaos or confusion, but rather orderly quiet; when strength and skill make hard work easy work; when, in short, true strength, knowledge, skill make it look easy — then you are in front of a worker like St. Joseph, whom we honor with a Solemnity on March 19 (and a Novena which starts today, March 10).

Saint Joseph’s silence in the Gospels isn’t a sign of weakness or insufficiency. It’s a sign of supreme strength. Our Lady had nothing to say of the toils and the difficulties of the journey to Bethlehem, or to Egypt, or back to Nazareth. Why? Perhaps she was concealing behind humility and modesty many hardships, but I suspect the truth lies elsewhere. 

I think we may be given a glimpse in that silence of the strength of St. Joseph, the quiet care of a father for his family who is the ultimate earthly provider, who is the Son of David, not just biologically or in his prophetic gifts, but also in his skill as a warrior if necessary, as a man who can thrive on the road, who could perfectly guard and guide the supreme members of the human race.

Father and father
In the silence of St. Joseph in the Gospels, we need to see that the earthly father of Jesus Christ is similar to God the Father, the Creator, whose work of creation didn’t just happen once at the Big Bang. No — God sustains the world in existence from moment to moment with wisdom and with love, and does it with such strength, such perfect predictability, that we can seriously speak of the laws of nature and atheists can wonder why anyone thinks we need a God to explain the existence of the world. The ancients mistook the universe for an eternal reality, an immortal thing, a context for lesser gods and heroes.

God the Father is so strong, so wise, so skilled, that we don’t notice His work from moment to moment. No flickers, no blips. Both St. Joseph and God the Father are tektons, builders, creators of homes, the man creator of human size homes, and God, the Creator of the world housing humanity. 

Noise at the end
Supreme strength is shown in silence. Lesser strength is shown in noise, chaos, confusion. The devil is at his strongest when he is whispering subtle poison in our ears, influencing the world in an unseen, undetected way; he is at his weakest when a possessed person in an exorcism is screaming in ancient languages, throwing people across the room, and all the dramatic preternatural symptoms of the devil’s imminent defeat are manifesting. 

The devil is a liar and a murderer from the beginning, but chained by Christ, restricted and restrained ever since Calvary, ever since the darkness and silence of Holy Saturday on earth, when Christ descended into hell, preached the Good News to the dead, and liberated the saints of the Old Testament, including His earthly father, St. Joseph.

Supreme strength was shown that day, that Holy Saturday, for all the earth saw what looked like defeat, for all that the earliest Christians must have faced a terrible test of their faith and discernment, before their faith in Christ was vindicated by the Resurrection, by the Good News of Christ’s triumph over all enemies.

With much to be humble about
We live in an age that has once again embraced the ancient practice of boasting, especially in rap and hip-hop, in wrestling and other combat sports, as it was practiced by the warriors, the heralds, the bards, the musicians of old. It was a long-standing tradition of ancient warfare, the boast before battle; the boast of warriors to daunt and intimidate their opponents, to beat their chests and puff themselves up, alongside their allies. We see this in the story of David (forebear to Joseph and Jesus) and Goliath (see 1 Sam 17). 

In the silent and silently suffering Sons of David, in Joseph and Jesus, we see a greater strength than in their forebear. David was a man after God’s own heart. Joseph raised Jesus, God Incarnate, to be a Man after Joseph’s own heart, as God the Father willed and intended. And Jesus’ Sacred Heart, pierced for our sins, redeems the entirety of creation.

Humility, Modesty, Silence
So as we honor St. Joseph on March 19, let us learn from his humility, modesty, and silence. Let us imitate him, doing good in the background. Let our secrets be holy ones. Let the layers of our lives become permeated by mercy and love at each and every level. Let us get closer to God, and so become strong in our weakness. 

Let us, this holy season of Lent, with prayer, fasting, and almsgiving work to become, like Jesus, children of St. Joseph. And let us pray to him and to his Son that we have even a fraction of their strength to live out love of God and neighbor.

Saint Joseph, son of David, the man whom Jesus called father, pray for us all.
{shopmercy-ad}